%0 Journal Article %1 noauthororeditor %A Mindermann, Kai %A Wagner, Stefan %D 2018 %J Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust %K %T Usability and Security Effects of Code Examples on Crypto APIs - CryptoExamples: A platform for free, minimal, complete and secure crypto examples %U https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01095 %X Context: Cryptographic APIs are said to be not usable and researchers suggest to add example code to the documentation. Aim: We wanted to create a free platform for cryptographic code examples that improves the usability and security of created applications by non security experts. Method: We created the open-source web platform CryptoExamples and conducted a controlled experiment where 58 students added symmetric encryption to a Java program. We then measured the usability and security. Results: The participants who used the platform were not only significantly more effective (+73 %) but also their code contained significantly less possible security vulnerabilities (-66 %). Conclusions: With CryptoExamples the gap between hard to change API documentation and the need for complete and secure code examples can be closed. Still, the platform needs more code examples.

@article{noauthororeditor, abstract = {Context: Cryptographic APIs are said to be not usable and researchers suggest to add example code to the documentation. Aim: We wanted to create a free platform for cryptographic code examples that improves the usability and security of created applications by non security experts. Method: We created the open-source web platform CryptoExamples and conducted a controlled experiment where 58 students added symmetric encryption to a Java program. We then measured the usability and security. Results: The participants who used the platform were not only significantly more effective (+73 %) but also their code contained significantly less possible security vulnerabilities (-66 %). Conclusions: With CryptoExamples the gap between hard to change API documentation and the need for complete and secure code examples can be closed. Still, the platform needs more code examples.}, added-at = {2023-08-31T14:18:03.000+0200}, author = {Mindermann, Kai and Wagner, Stefan}, biburl = {https://puma.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/bibtex/2d55cd09ee2e2eaef130789427371e666/puma-wartung}, interhash = {c0ba1fa570bb2cec61549cfd0bbc2e23}, intrahash = {d55cd09ee2e2eaef130789427371e666}, journal = {Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust}, keywords = {}, month = aug, timestamp = {2023-08-31T12:18:03.000+0200}, title = {Usability and Security Effects of Code Examples on Crypto APIs - CryptoExamples: A platform for free, minimal, complete and secure crypto examples}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01095}, year = 2018 }